Robin Robertson (1) (1954–)

With most cookbooks, I'll spot three or four recipes that sound good enough to actually try. This one is page after page of easy-to-make meals that sound really good and exotic, yet call for ingredients I can get at any Sprout's or Asian market. There are so many cuisines represented: Turkish eggplant with walnut sauce, Quinoa Tabbouleh, Provencal vegetables and rice, Cuban black beans, Texas too-hot chili, vegetables with Thia peanut sauce... I think I'll start with the wild rice salad. I show more only wish there were photos. show less

Healthy, From-Scratch Versions of Your Favorite Vegan Junk Food

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)

-- 3.5 stars --

Along with pizza, mac & cheese is one of my favorite, go-to, if you were stuck on a deserted island and could only eat one food for the rest of your life, vegan foodstuffs. Unlike pizza, though, there are precious few cookbooks devoted entirely to its delicious cheesy goodness.

If you're thinking, well duh, how many ways are there to make show more macaroni and cheese, then clearly you don't read my blog. (Spoiler alert: there are currently twenty-two posts tagged "macaroni and cheese," representing a small fraction of the recipes I have sampled and/or created, ranging from the classic Creamy Mac & Cheese with Daiya to the less traditional Mac & Pepperjack Pizza.)

So you can imagine my excitement when I got a whiff of Robin Robertson's latest cookbook, Vegan Mac and Cheese - More than 50 Delicious Plant-Based Recipes for the Ultimate Comfort Food.

My anticipation was tempered a bit once I finally had the book in my hungry little hands: all of the recipes tip toward the health food end of the scale. Not that I have a problem with healthy vegan food, but you gotta live a little, you know? Throw a few unabashedly junky recipes in there to liven things up, or else let us know right in the title that this isn't ONE OF THOSE kinds of cookbooks. Anything else feels like a total Bad Place kind of move.

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The recipes I tried were a bit of a mixed bag, ranging from "pretty yummy" to "more trouble than it's worth" (full rundown below). The cheese sauces utilize a variety of "bases" (if you can call them that; perhaps "key ingredients" is more accurate?), ranging from cashews to tofu to carrots and potatoes. With few exceptions, the ingredients are pretty common and easy to find in American grocery stores. (Pro tip: if a recipe calls for miso and you don't feel like buying an entire container just for a teaspoon, tahini is an okay substitute.) The recipes are pretty straightforward and easy to follow, and not terribly labor intensive (though some do create an undogly amount of dishes).

There's a nice variety of dishes here; the recipes are grouped under five subheadings, including "Basic Vegan Mac & Cheese," "Global Cheesy Macs," "Mac and Veggies," "Meaty Macs," and "Fun with Mac & Cheese" (which isn't so much new recipes as some interesting ideas of how to repurpose leftovers, like making mac omelets, waffles, and cheese balls). I can honestly say, as a self-proclaimed expert whose life goal is to try every vegan mac & cheese recipe ever published in any major cookbook, there are some inspired and singular recipes in here - as well as some that are merely "meh" (even accounting for my strong preference for junk food mac & cheese).

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Roasted Butternut Mac Uncheese

This is the first recipe in the "Mac and Veggies" section, and for good reason - it's forking amazing. The cheese sauce is a mix of roasted butternut squash (yum!) and soaked raw cashews. It doesn't taste much like melted Daiya or Follow Your Heart cheese (few-to-none of the recipes in this book do), and that's okay! It's its own thing.

Pro tip: if you don't have any soy milk on hand (thanks, Corona virus), water works just fine too. Throw a few extra cashews into the mix to compensate.

Bonus points if you roast the squash seeds and use them as a garnish. (The recipe calls for pumpkin seeds, which seems ... kind of silly?)

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Cashew Cheesy Mac

Another winner! Roasted red peppers lend this dish both a distinct taste, and its eye-popping, boxed mac & cheese, neon orange color.

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Blushing Baked Ziti

This is where things started to spiral for me (metaphorically, not literally, though - good eye! - I did swap out the ziti for fusilli). Despite my initial skepticism, I decided to give this casserole a whirl, mostly because I had a brick of tofu with a close expiration date. At first blush (lol), it reminded me of spaghetti pie: just with a differently shaped macaroni, and more layers (read: steps). Rather than the classic configuration of pasta-tofu-red sauce-optional shredded cheese, it goes red sauce-pasta-red sauce-tofu-pasta-red sauce-tofu.

So many layers! So much long division! So much work! So much mess everywhere! All for a dish that just left me wishing I'd made spaghetti pie instead (insert sad face here).

Honestly, this recipe is way more complicated than it needs to be, and I don't think the many (so many!) extra layers do anything for it. If anything, I felt like the ricotta tofu didn't bake as thoroughly, and with the sauce and pasta in such close proximity, you may as well just mix them from jump street.

Fwiw, the nut parm (made with ray almonds and nutritional yeast) is seriously amazing. I am putting it on all the things now.

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Free Mac

Last and sadly least (SO SAD!), we have the Free Mac. The sauce is mix of onions, carrots, and potatoes boiled in a vegetable broth, then run through a blender to create a mock cheesy sauce. I actually don't think this would be bad if not for the broth: with three cups of the stuff, this mac & cheese ends up tasting a lot like vegetable soup. Not bad, necessarily, but disconcerting: you have a dish that looks like one thing (macaroni and cheese) but tastes like another (veggie soup).

My suggestion: use water in place of broth, in whole or part, and add extra spices to taste.

This is the rare macaroni and cheese dish that improves as leftovers: once the sauce has had a chance to soak into the pasta, the taste of veggie soup isn't quite so overwhelming. It's also really good mixed with a mildly flavored couscous in a 1:1 ratio. (I like preparing it on the stovetop with a little vegan chicken broth, carrots, and corn.)

So there you have it: two A recipes, two C minuses. Not my most glowing cookbook review. Blame the sky-high expectations that accompany any mention of vegan mac-n-cheese.

BUT, if you're half the vegan mac & cheese fan I am, you probably want to take Vegan Mac and Cheese for a spin anyway. There are some neat ideas in here, and I can't wait to try the Cheesy Mac Muffins (but probably using my own junk food mac & cheese concoction; there's no beating Daiya, mkay).

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We’ve had this cookbook for about 3 years now, and its stature and use in our kitchen has only grown over time. I felt disappointed with this cookbook when I first got it. The subtitled reads “200 Sultry and Savory Global Recipes”, so when I looked through it and found that a substantial number of those 200 were sauces, marinades, or other condiments, I felt like I’d been a little cheated or something.

I was also initially bothered to see that most of the recipes are comprised of show more short ingredient lists and only 2-3 steps. I thought this meant that the recipes would be boring or unimpressive. On this account, though, my worries were misplaced. Almost without exception, the recipes in this book are great. The actual level of “fire” varies wildly, so if you’re like me and really like the spice, you may have to turn up the heat on some. But everything is tasty, and there’s a great variety of recipes of all types here, organized by geographical region. And that simplicity that bothered me at first? That’s actually what has made this book such a staple in our kitchen, especially on busy weeknights when a complicated or time-consuming dinner is just not going to do it. It also makes this a great cookbook for beginning vegetarians, who are still trying to feel their way around what they can do without meat.

My biggest complaints have to do with nutrition and serving size. The book, like many others, provides no nutritional information on recipes, which is frustrating for those who are calorie-, carb-, or protein-conscious. That said, the recipes actually tend to be pretty healthful. More frustrating is the vagueness on serving size. Sometimes a recipe only says "serves 4 to 6," which is unclear and hard to work with when cooking for company. Other times, it's specific and reads "serves 4" - but then you make it and it’s actually 8 huge, filling servings worth of food. This is annoying, especially in our house where we are always either cooking only for 2 - and want to be able to adjust recipes accordingly - or else are cooking for large dinner parties, and want to be sure to have the right amount of food for everyone.

My complaints are small, though, in comparison with the use this book gets in our household. Great food, usually easy to make, and generally pretty healthy with minimal-to-no alteration. VFS is now a favorite in our kitchen. show less

Even if you don’t know Robin Robertson by name, you probably know her cookbooks. She’s responsible for over a dozen cookbooks, including the omnivore favorite Vegetarian Meat & Potatoes, the clever Apocalypse Chow (recipes to make when the power goes out), and the enormous Vegan Planet. Robin’s recipes are accessible yet varied, a testament to her 25 years as a chef, caterer, cooking instructor, and food columnist. Quick-Fix Vegetarian: Healthy Home-Cooked meals in 30 Minutes or Less show more is Robin’s latest, offering up (as the title suggests), fast and easy meals for those in a rush. All recipes are vegan, even though the title avoids saying so outright.

The chapters are pretty much what you’d expect, covering everything from appetizers to sauces to sandwiches and desserts. There’s also a chapter on slow-cooking and “one-dish wonders.” There are 150 recipes in just under 200 pages, each recipe featuring a one paragraph introduction, something I really appreciate in cookbooks. I like context to a recipe before trying it.

We’ve made a number of the recipes over the last couple of months and they’ve all come out nicely. The Potato “Dosadillas” are an interesting dosa-quesadilla hybrid. We thought they needed a little more spice (which could be because we doubled the amount of peas), but they were surprisingly good and easy. The Curried Couscous and Vegetables is another simple dish that stretches a long way. A few minutes in the kitchen will serve you well for dinner and several lunches thereafter. The Couscous Shepherd’s Pie was also plentiful — the only change we’d make to this one is to steam the tempeh first if you use it instead of veggie crumbles or tofu.

Perhaps the best recipe we’ve made thus far is the Panko-Crusted Tofu Cutlets with Lemon-Caper Sauce. Panko is basically flaky Japanese breadcrumbs and it provides a great crust when fried up on the tofu. And the sour-salty combination of the sauce is wicked good. The only complaint here was that it took significantly longer than 30 minutes to make (we had a similar issue with the Stir-Fried Tofu and Vegetable Teriyaki). That said, it was well worth the effort.

Even if you have some of Robin’s other books, you’ll probably want to take a peek at this one. There are a number of other interesting recipes I’m looking forward to trying: PDQ Pot Pie (the pot pie from Vegetarian Meat & Potatoes is a holiday stand-by around here), Green Onion Hummus with Lime, and Linguine with Edamame Pesto are all on our to-make list.

The book is simply laid out and the recipes are easy to follow, with one per page. The only complaint I have is the same one I’ve had with a few other of Robin’s books: there are no pictures of any recipes. Sure, there are some food pictures, but they’re all stock photos, and that’s no fun. People are inspired by seeing food photos, which is why food blogs are so popular. It’s a shame that there aren’t even a few nice color panels in the middle of the book.

So, thumbs up for Quick-Fix Vegetarian. A few recipes took longer than the promised 30 minutes, but the results have all been quite good so far. I suspect a year from now, this will be a well-worn book on our kitchen shelf.

(originally posted at http://www.vegblog.org/archive/2007/05/28/cookbook-review-quick-fix-vegetarian/ ) show less